Friday, April 29, 2005

Homeschooling: Not for Blacks?

Opponents of homeschooling ask me "How can you keep your children out of public school? Your ancestors sacrificed to make Brown vs Board of Education a success so you could have equal opportunities in education."

We have been waiting for over 50 years to see some positive results from that ruling.

First of all, merely sitting next to someone of a different race and having the same textbooks that they have is not enough to provide a quality education. Family factors are undoubtedly very important as well. In fact, blacks had higher literacy rates when families were more intact even in the face of Jim Crow racism. The implication is that intact families can do more to improve a measurement like literacy than court rulings can. Black families in particular are fractured and sending kids off to public school with it's complete lack of focus on family values is doing nothing to help the situation.

For years before the black reliance on public schools, blacks learned in a Christian setting either at home or in the local segregated school house. I believe that a large part of the problem in the African-American community today is due to a lack of Christian influence in our households. Racism may play a role in some factors but in issues such as our higher rates of abortion, out-of-wedlock births, drug use and crime, lack of morals and values in many adults and no one teaching our youth morals and values are to blame.

50 years is long enough to prove that families must improve themselves and take control of their children's education. Although this is true for all parents, the burden is especially upon those for whom public schools have completely failed throughout history.

My children will not be sacrificed for the sake of political correctness.